Students want "Year of Our Lord" taken off their diplomas

One Trinity University student says: "By having the phrase ‘In the Year of Our Lord,' it is directly referencing Jesus Christ, and not everyone believes in Jesus Christ." The College Republicans president wants students to "accept it and tolerate it." (San Antonio Express-News)

Comments

[Sheila]

If a student doesn't like religious references, he should go to a university with no religious affiliation.

[NitroPress]

Um, I agree fully with the elimination of pointless, assumed-belief religious statements where they don't belong, but if students are going to attend TRINITY College, they don't have much of a basis for objecting to a Christian reference on their diplomas...

[DA]

I hope to God they get their way.

[buddy]

it is a private university. if you do not believe in a magical zombie jew then you shouldnt go there. you wont see me there.

[GWC]

Welcome to 2010 in the Year of the Invisible Sky Wizard !

[MidtownCoog]

Anything to protect the backwards muslims from their sensibilities.

[Tom]

Well, what year do they think it is? Guess what event people placed at or about year zero? Someone arbitrarily made the distinction between BC and AD for our Gregorian calendar.

If they don't like it, they can go to school in China where it is the year 4707.

[MidtownCoog]

And who wants to connect the dots from Qureshi to CARE?

YOU KNOW THIS

[AngrySockMonkey]

I would like to think the college should give out black magic markers so the DAMN STUDENTS CAN DO IT THEMSELVES!!!
I for one, would be more concerned about where I was going to work now that mom and dad wont have to foot the bill for me wasting away 4 years of their hard eaned money on a horticulture degree.

But most of all I would like to give thanks to the thin skinned american for the degredation of our society.

Thanks for being a bunch of pussies...

eat up, you earned it

nuff said

[DS]

"In the Year of Our Lord"

Sweet, my Lord is the FSM. So they are honoring the FSM with every diploma! How progressive!

[DS]

"In the Year of Our Lord"

Sweet, my Lord is the FSM. So they are honoring the FSM with every diploma! How progressive!

[Take no Prisoners]

I am quite sure now that often, very often, in matters concerning
religion and politics, that a mans reasoning powers are not that far above a monkey's.......

Samuel Clemens

[thomas]

Maybe they'd prefer Year After Big Bang 14,000,000,2010
More or Less.

[NitroPress]

Tom, just because we had a calendar dating from a mythical event forced on us doesn't mean we need to believe the basis for the division. It irritates me when people point to the fact that we all use this calendar as some sort of general statement about us being a "Christian nation."

Personally, I use CE and BCE whenever it's necessary to define a year date precisely. That's "Common Era," not "Christian Era," BTW.

[Notch Johnson]

I long for the day when we can once and for all purge religion from our society.

[David]

Why change? Look up "Chef Goes Nanners"

[thomas]

Notch;
Seems to work well for North Korea.

[MidtownCoog]

Sure Nitro, sure you do.

[Abe Froeman]

This guy chose to go to a religion-based college. He has no reason whatsoever to complain about his diploma. What an idiot. Like AngrySockMonkey said, Get a marker and cross it out yourself, schmuck, and get on with your life!

[BlueMary]

BCE and CE are perfectly good notations for antiquities and are widely used. In any event they are more representative of date confidence--there being at least a *little* controversy over the precise year, month, day, and time of Christ's birth and death. Especially since you heathens won't use sidereal time.

I prefer BCE, but I resent JrDinkyDoos who deliberatly develop easily offended sensibilites and then equally deliberatly go some place where they can get easily offended.

I don't tell the Bishop of Rome to rewire the catholic church for sound thinking and enlightment and he doesn't tell me how to put on a girdle.

[Bill]

Well I happen to be an atheist, and seldom pass up an opprtunity to piss off Christians, because in a lot of cases, they are the ones who are imposing their will on others.

Not today though, the diploma is issued by the school and (presumably) signed by the President of the University or a Department chair.

That signature is what makes the diploma a valid legal document. This is not a contract between 2 parties, it is simply a statement of facts issued by one of them. If that President, Dean or other academician is OK with the diploma as it is written, that's good enough for me.

If I was the school president and it was my signature, I ould do things a bit differently, but the signatory(or -ies) should be able to make their own call.

[Charles]

What is a Muslim doing at a school which acknowledges the Trinity?
Expel them for not being Christian.

[Phranqlin]

Tempest in a teapot ... or a diploma frame.

I sympathize with the Muslim student's point, though. Perhaps he can get the date on his diploma changed from The Year of Our Lord 2010 to 1431 al-Hijri.

(That is, the 1431st year since Mohammed and company's journey from Mecca to Medina, marking Year 1 in the Islamic calendar.)

[jj2]

When I read the article, I also felt my dander rising, but the comments were enlightening. Apparently, the school "divorced" itself from the Presbyterian church decades ago, and the name is both a reference to the Christian Trinity and the fact that it was three schools that were joined to form the one university.
Now, the only references to religion are a chapel on campus and a school chaplain. That said, if a student is going to spend a lot of time worrying about what her diploma says, she should probably spend part of the previous four years looking to see what it will say. Jumping up right before graduation demanding: "I want something else on mine," or "you need to change everyone's diploma to recognize my preferences" is unreasonable.

[me2]

jj2 - I agree.

If you don't like what is said on your diploma cross it out. Or make one of your own and ask if it could be signed as official.

[Jetfixer]

What a complete waste of time. Havn't they got something better to complain about?

[N=AngrySockMonkey]

I was waiting for this

Bill you have just won the IDBIGA . Please on behalf of a grateful nation....accept this award... (applause light is lit)

[Sarah]

I got a black sharpie he can borrow.

Year of Our Lord is a Western Civilization tradition. Don't want a diploma that mentions it? Go to school in the Middle East. Problem solved.

[cunninglinguist]

I wrote a paper on this in grad school - in a course titled "Legal Aspects of Higher Education". I went to a public university in the south and it was on the diploma.

University counsel agreed with me that the words "in the year of our lord" was illegal and opened the university up to heightened liability and potential lawsuits based on the following reasons

1) Separation of church and state
2) beyond that - the wording has to either be long-standing (not the case, but it is for currency) or too costly to rectify (not the case since diplomas are printed yearly).